


each time you happen to me

by jaegermighty



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, Getting Back Together, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 17:10:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15147917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaegermighty/pseuds/jaegermighty
Summary: "She's," Conner says, pausing a little because he's not really sure what to say, "hanging in there.""And you?" Babs asks, kindly. "You're hanging in, too?"





	each time you happen to me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fleurting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurting/gifts).



M'gann bakes, a lot. She is determined to figure it out, to perfect her methods, and so she bakes and bakes and then bakes some more. Conner eats cherry turnovers for breakfast, chicken pot pie for lunch, beef wellington for dinner. There are no leftovers, because there are a lot of hungry superhumans who walk through their kitchen on a regular basis, but somehow, even when he's not there when it comes out of the oven, Conner always gets first bite. 

Baked pears in cream, snickerdoodle cookies, apple pie with cheddar cheese crust. Rosemary chicken, shepherd's pie with huge chunks of tender, salty beef, pork chops crusted with honey and buried in sweet potatoes. Green curry in a crockpot, simmering all day until the entire Watchtower smells like coconut and spice. Muffins - corn muffins, blueberry muffins, peach muffins, egg and cheese muffins. M'gann has a recipe journal, and she's got hundreds of blank pages to fill. 

Saturday afternoon, she makes brownies. Conner's been training, and he's hungry, and they're warm and he can tell she used dark chocolate, and he eats a huge corner piece right there, standing at the stove in his gym shorts. Cassie wanders in a few moments after, takes one look at him mid-bite, then snorts and leaves again. 

Conner makes a face at the empty doorway, and cuts himself another piece. 

M'gann is standing at the bathroom mirror in their room when he walks in, staring at herself. She's changing her hair from red to black to blonde and then back again, considering herself seriously, head tilted. Conner trips on the rug, staring at her, and almost drops his brownie.

"Oh," she says, snapping back to herself. To the self that she's been favoring lately, that is, which is the short hair, but a slightly lighter red. More freckles, too; Conner doesn't think she's noticed that he's noticed. "Hey. Is that for me?"

"You made them," Conner says, holding it out.

"I wasn't sure if they were cooked all the way though - brownies are so hard," she complains. She pokes at it with a fingernail, nibbles at the corner. Her eyebrows pull together as she chews, displeased.

"I thought they were good," Conner says.

"Overcooked," M'gann complains, handing it back. Conner sets it carefully on the counter, on its paper towel; she might change her mind and eat the rest later. "Damn! I can never tell. I should just follow the cooking time in the recipe, but I overthink it."

"Brownies are hard," Conner commisserates.

"Yes," she agrees, turning back to the mirror. Conner catches her face in its reflection, in a split second moment where her expression is unguarded. There's something about the turn of her frown that's been making him uneasy, lately, but he's not sure how to approach it, or whether there's anything to approach at all. He's not sure she'd want him to, anyway. "How was your workout?"

"Fine." Conner brushes past her, on his way to the shower. M'gann wrinkles her nose at him in the mirror, playful, and changes her hair again, back to blonde, hanging down long and low, past her shoulders. "Thinking about a makeover?"

"Trying out disguises," she says. "Tim's thing, with the party? He wants me to come. I need something...dramatic."

Conner tosses his shirt in the laundry hamper, glancing over his shoulder. Blonde with red streaks, now. She looks ridiculous. "What kind of party is this, exactly?"

"A hip one." M'gann changes her nose, just slightly longer, and adds a piercing. He laughs, despite himself. "Too much?"

She sounds so genuinely disappointed that he laughs again, sliding his arms around her waist. "You look like a club kid," he says, pressing the words into the side of her familiar neck, nosing beneath her shimmering wave of hair. It changes again, back to his favorite red, the dark ruby shade she used to wear when they were young. 

"I can be cool," M'gann says breathlessly. "In fact, I _am_ cool. You're not around me all the time, so you don't know."

"You're only cool when I'm not around?"

"You bring the vibe down," M'gann says somberly. "I feel bad, so I overcompensate."

Conner bites her shoulder, and she yelps, laughing.

"Take a shower, you stink," she says, pushing him away. 

"Eat your brownie, and then join me," he replies. 

She smirks at him and shoves the entire thing in her mouth. Conner trips on the rug again, this time because he's laughing. He does that a lot, nowadays. He'd forgotten what it was like. 

He'd forgotten a lot of things. The next day M'gann is gone, helping Black Canary with something in Star City, and Conner eats half a pan of potato casserole for breakfast. She'd gotten up early to make it, slipping out of bed before the sun had even risen, hushing him when he'd tried to get up to help. 

"I'm just gonna put it in the oven, it has to bake a long time. I'll be right back," she'd said. She didn't come back. Conner woke up an hour later to a text saying, _sorry! Dinah caught me, be back late_ with a kissy face emoji. He's not upset about it. 

"Didja leave any for the rest of us?" asks Virgil, popping up out of nowhere and clapping Conner on the back. Conner silently hands him the serving spoon. "Mm. Thanks."

"M'gann made it," Conner says.

"Dude, I know, she's everybody's favorite right now," Virgil replies, mouth full of potato. "I was thanking you for _sharing_."

Conner frowns. "She doesn't make it all for me. She cooks for everyone."

Virgil snorts, the same exact incredulous sound that Cassie had made. Conner narrows one eye at him, unimpressed, until he leaves, clutching his bowl to his chest protectively. 

He's not so hungry after that. He spends the day in the library, reading. They're on stand down right now; Zatanna broke her leg and Tigress busted four ribs last week. Conner tried to visit, but they were huddled together on a couch in the downstairs lounge, talking intensely, intimately. He sent them a 'get well' text instead.

M'gann comes back late. Conner's already in bed, half asleep, the radio playing softly, turned down low. She shuts it off before she slips beneath the covers, which is what wakes him up. She smells like gasoline.

"You stink," he mumbles, pulling her closer. She hums absently, tucking in against his side, rubbing her cheek against his arm. "How'd it go?"

"Fine. It was just some surveillance."

She gets bored, cooped up in the Watchtower, he knows. None of them feel great about solo missions, since Wally, so when there's an injury, they usually hang around the tower for the most part. It's tense, when one of them is gone. But she's powerful - very powerful, and the League doesn't hesitate to ask her for favors. Worrying, or being offended, would be a waste of energy, Conner knows. "Good."

"Did you eat the casserole?"

"Yeah."

"How was it?" 

She sounds worried. "Good, it was good. Virgil had some too, he liked it."

"Oh. That's good." She sounds crestfallen, almost, like his answer had disappointed her somehow. Conner is uneasy about this, too. How she drifts, sometimes, into sadness, spurred by the most random things. 

Her hair is blonde again. Conner runs his hand through it, frowning, watching it shimmer gently in the moonlight pouring through the window. "You okay?"

"What? Sure." Her hair snaps back to red. Conner sighs, pulling his hand away. "What about you?"

"I'm fine." He cups her cheek and pulls her chin up for a kiss, long and slow. He can feel her toes curl, pressed as they are against the arches of his feet. 

"Mm," she says, when he pulls away. "Day off tomorrow?"

"Yeah," he says, kissing her forehead.

"Sleep now," she mumbles, eyes closed, smiling. She tucks her face into his arm again, wiggling around to find a comfortable spot. 

"Sure," he agrees, holding her tight. He watches her breathe for a long time, before he falls asleep. 

 

 

 

Zatanna heals quickly, but Kaldur wants them to be cautious, so they ease back into it. Conner and Barbara spend a long, dirty weekend in Gotham, looking into some suspicious movement from a drug cartel with ties to a Lexcorp subsidiary. M'gann texts him several pictures of her undercover outfit, for Robin's party thing, that Conner carefully does not look at until he's alone. She also sends them off with cookies.

"God, these are good," says Babs, helping herself to the last two. One thing Conner likes about Batgirl is that she doesn't seem to care if people think she's rude, which leads to her acting incredibly rude. It's kind of refreshing. "You must be _great_ in bed."

Conner rolls his eyes. "Shut up."

"What? Everybody else is thinking it."

"Well, think whatever you want, but don't say it. It's nobody's business but ours."

Babs looks a little chagrined, and offers him one of the cookies with a sheepish smile - her version of an apology. He waves her away; he's not really offended. It's just something he has to say to them, sometimes. 

"How is she, though? Really," Babs says, munching on her cookies, looking serious. "She's been gone a lot, and when she's back, all she does is cook. And disappear with you."

It's all they've been doing, since they got back together. Conner tries not to think about it, worry about it, that it feels like a holding pattern, a pit stop before something bad. When they make love, she cries sometimes. He'd stopped the first time, upset that she was upset, and she got defensive and they fought, and ever since then she's hidden it from him. Turns her face away, disappears into the shower or the kitchen afterwards. Sometimes, she stays in the kitchen all night, baking. Conner eats it all, tries everything, tells her it's delicious and thanks her with hugs and kisses and jokes, helps her with the recipe journal, sends her links to food blogs and clips of cooking shows, but still, she cries sometimes. Still, he feels uneasy. 

"She's," Conner says, pausing a little because he's not really sure what to say, "hanging in there."

Batgirl hums sympathetically, her face sad. They all miss Wally. It's never not there, hanging in the air, in every room, every conversation. 

"And you?" Babs asks, kindly. "You're hanging in, too?"

"I try," Conner says.

"Better than nothing," Babs replies, and munches some more. Conner sighs, and regrets not taking the cookie. 

They take a jet back, not wanting to stay a second night, and Conner claims a seat near the back and takes out his phone to look at M'gann's pictures, more closely than he was able to before. She'd gone with blonde, of course, but a golden shade close to the disguise she wore undercover in Belle Reve. Supervillain blonde. She's in a killer of a dress, red and black, and the accompanying text says, _guess where I hid my gun ;)_

 _You don't use guns,_ Conner texts back. 

She replies almost immediately. _i'm flirting, u dope. it's an expression_

__

__

_I knew that. I was flirting back._

There's a long pause before her reply in which Conner is certain that she's rolling her eyes. He can feel the eyeroll through the phone. It's a very judgmental pause. _dork,_ she sends, with another emoji. _u on ur way home?_

_I'll be there in about an hour._

_i'm in bed already_

Conner takes a deep breath and puts his phone away. Babs is talking to somebody - Nightwing, probably - on the radio, laughing loudly in the cockpit. She won't notice or care if he naps, so he closes his eyes, leans back in his chair, and thinks about their bed. Dark brown sheets, the big puffy duvet they picked out from a catalog. She's always got flour or something on her clothes, and her hair smells burnt sometimes, from cooking oil or grease or whatever weather she'd flown through on her way home, to their bedroom. She's been wearing her hair long at night, because she knows he likes it. Likes to grab it, specifically. Run his hands through it, wrap it in his fists. It changes color, sometimes, when he touches it. Like it's got a mind of its own. 

His phone buzzes again in his pocket, and Conner smiles to himself. He already knows what she's gonna say. 

 

 

 

Their second first kiss was in the library. After they'd returned from Mars, Conner had holed up there for a few days, unable to sleep a full night without waking from nightmares. He'd attacked the fiction section with single minded intensity - mystery, mostly, which he found charming. Murder mysteries with little old lady detectives and British men with mustaches and tobacco pipes. Conner read the whole shelf, one by one. 

M'gann would join him in the afternoons, reading her own books, and they didn't talk much, not at first. But it came slowly, and then one day they found somebody's stereo, shoved in a corner beneath an abandoned pile of file folders. They'd plugged it in and turned it on and dug up some CDs to listen to, and at some point, sitting cross legged on the floor, sorting out the empty cases and mismatched disks, they kissed. 

"Oh! Sorry, I'm sorry," M'gann said, pulling back, looking panicked. Conner frowned at her, confused, and a little dismayed. "I didn't mean to - "

"What?" Conner asked. "I kissed you back."

"Oh, well," M'gann blustered, then fell silent, picking at the edge of her sleeve. 

Conner remembers the push of frustration, a familiar swell of impulsiveness that used to get him in trouble when he was young, before he learned how to breathe through the anger and let it fall away. He didn't do that with M'gann, not that time. He just kissed her again, not wanting to talk about it - to talk himself _out_ of it. He kissed her again, and again, and then kissed her some more, until they were rolling around on the floor, a pile of books toppled over beside their heads. 

It felt easy, too easy, to melt back together. Conner doesn't think he'll ever be as comfortable with anyone else as he can be with M'gann, and the pull of that familiarity is strong, and a little dangerous. Forgiveness was hard, but he made it there in the end, and everything after that felt like a waste of time. Just stupid conversations they had to have, because it was necessary, because it's just what people did, before they got to the real stuff - the heart of who they were. The way they were meant to be.

Except, it wasn't easy. He'd _expected_ it to be easy, and it _seemed_ easy, but actually - it wasn't. She doesn't dare to speak to him telepathically, not unless she has to, in the field, and even then her touch is light, professional, distant. Conner doesn't know how he feels about that, but he knows he doesn't like the way it obviously makes her feel - he's not stupid. He doesn't know what to say, how to talk to her about it. He's not sure he wants to give her permission to go back to the way it was before, and he's not sure that's what she wants, either. 

When he was young, only days out of the lab, her voice in his mind felt like the voice of God. Not that he believed in God, or even knew what that word meant at the time, but there's no other way to describe the precious awe of that warm presence, another being who could see into his head, into everything he was, and accept him, love him with such tenderness and enthusiasm. He would not have survived without her, he would not be the man he is today, and he knows that without question. He's not sure what that means for them now. He's not really sure of anything. 

M'gann stole the stereo and put it in their bedroom. Nobody said anything - it probably belonged to Wally. Conner hasn't mentioned this theory out loud yet. 

 

 

 

She's awake when he gets back, listening to the radio, sitting up in bed with some surveillance photos. She smiles when he walks in the room. 

"Hi," she says, warm and casually relaxed. He kisses her mouth, quickly, just a peck, and then her nose, and then right between her eyebrows. She giggles softly. "How was the mission?"

"Fine. We didn't find much of anything." It was a dead end, and they'd known it, but they had to look anyway. No stone unturned. "Other than drug dealers, anyway."

"But normal drug dealers."

"Jailed drug dealers, now," Conner says, slipping off his shoes. M'gann scoots over, giving him space to sit down. 

"Good," M'gann says, perfunctory. "I made bouillabaisse."

"Bee a what?" asks Conner.

"Fish stew," M'gann says, beaming. "I left it in the oven for you."

Conner hesitates, reaching out for her hand. "I'm not really that hungry. We had food on the flight back."

"Oh. Well - "

"M'gann," Conner says, before she can breeze past it, change the subject, and then feel bad about it for the rest of the night. Running it over and over in her head, like it means more than it is. "You cook for me because you _want_ to. Right?"

"Of course." She's frowning, her skin is flickering a little, nervously, like when they fight. But she squeezes his hand back, when he does it first. "It's not a - I'm not trying to be a _wife._ If that's what you think. I just...I like it."

Conner has a mental hiccup over the word "wife," and breathes through that, before he answers. "That's not what I…" he trails off, squeezing her hand tight. She puts down her file folder, and puts her other hand on top of his, waiting patiently. Watching his face, eyes wide and solemn. "Gimme a minute. Gimme just a minute, to get ready, and then I want you to read my mind."

"Conner?" M'gann blinks rapidly, flickering again. "What do you mean, I - I don't - that's not what I've been trying to - "

"I want you to. Just - just give me a second."

M'gann nods, her expression still dimly shocked, and Conner stands up, turning away and breathing deep, even and slow through his nose. Dinah taught him to do this once, to breathe in and count to four, hold for seven, exhale for eight. Repeat, repeat, until the anger falls away. He does it now, trying to hold what he wants to say in his mind, to form it into something coherent, that she couldn't possibly misunderstand. When he's ready, he turns around.

"Okay," he says, "you can look."

"Are you sure?" M'gann says tensely. "Conner, look me in the eye. Are you sure?"

"I'm sure," he says, and M'gann looks shocked again, like she's been sucker punched. But she squares her shoulders, and her chin lifts up, and then, she looks. 

It's been years since he's let her do this and it's overwhelming at first. She's always polite about it but she can't disguise the breadth of her strength, and he can feel it, and he flinches away from it, on instinct. He can tell that hurts her the way he can tell she's being careful, as delicate as she can be, determinedly looking only at what he wants her to look at, not spreading out and rolling around in his mindscape like they used to do, before, when he didn't care what she saw, when he trusted her in a different way. He thinks about that and he thinks about now, about this new trust, one that's been tested and broken and mended through strength of will and experience. It's stronger, doesn't she see? It's better this way, now that he knows himself better, that he knows who she is and who he is and where she stops and starts and loses track of what she's doing. He shows her the long, terrible nights after they broke up, when he ran for hours on the treadmill, going nowhere but unable to stop, the tv dinners and sitting in silence with Dick or Wally, not knowing how to talk about how the world didn't make sense anymore. He thinks about her recipe journal with its well worn and loved pages, her lovely handwriting, the curls at the ends of her n's, her greenness against their brown sheets, her smiles in the morning showers, her muffins and the way her limbs look in her true form, the pale white skin stretched tightly over sturdy, unbreakable bone, always cool to the touch, coiled power that he trusts her to use in a kind way, the right way. Breath against his arm at night, a hand on his shoulder, food in his belly, a smile in his mirror. Doesn't she see? Can she see it now, how it is?

"I see it, I see it," she says, and Conner blinks, and sees the room again. She's crying, reaching out for him, and he kneels at the side of the bed and sinks down against her knees, hugging her waist and breathing deeply, trying not to cry too. Trying not to let it overwhelm him. "Oh, Conner. _Conner,_ I love you. I'm sorry, I love you."

"I love you too," he says, telling it to her knees. Then he tells it to her stomach, and her breastbone, and her neck, and her chin, and both of her eyes, squeezing her hands and kissing her skin until she's laughing, wriggling in delight, wrapping her legs around his waist and locking her ankles together, like they're wrestling. Conner laughs too, helplessly, pressing it into her neck, breathing hard, like he's just run a marathon. He was a little panicked, maybe, letting her do that. But sometimes, you gotta take the leap. You just gotta do it. 

"I was so worried," M'gann says, babbling a little like she does sometimes, "I was worried that we weren't talking enough and that we'd mess it up again but you never seemed to want to talk, and I know it makes you feel bad that you don't know what to say so I didn't wanna push and I really do like baking, truly, you know. I like the way your face looks when you try something new, like you're surprised, that's the only reason I do it, it's not because I'm trying to _keep you around,_ I mean - I _am_ trying to keep you around because I love you so much but it's not like _that,_ like I think I have to _pay you back_ or - or whatever it was that you thought that made you feel like - like that - oh, Conner - "

"Shh, shh," Conner says, still laughing, at her beautiful, blushing face, at her shaking knees, at her ridiculous, color-changing hair. He'd thought it _meant_ something, that she couldn't stick to one, but she'd just been trying to _make him laugh_. "We both think too much," he says, and kisses her mouth. She kisses him back, salty from her tears, laughing a little, deep in her throat. 

"You coulda told me you didn't like potatoes," M'gann mumbles, after he pulls away. Her eyes are shining. 

"I don't like potatoes," Conner tells her.

"Then why did you eat it?!"

"Because you made it, stupid," Conner says, kissing her again, stopping her next sentence. 

"Mm," M'gann says, still a little choked up, quivering in his arms. She presses her face against her arm briefly, and laughs once, loud and sharp. "Okay," she says, higher than usual. She nods, her hair lengthening suddenly, spreading out on the pillow like pools of water, streaming down the pillowcase. "Maybe we talk too much, too."

"Probably," Conner agrees, cupping her face, tracing the angle of her eyebrow with his thumb. "I like your brownies, though."

"Well, trust me, I already knew _that_ ," M'gann says. 

"I do," Conner says, warmly. Her eyes widen, and then flutter shut. He says it again, and then again, so she really hears it - whispers it into the air between them, a declaration and a promise: "I do, I do."

**Author's Note:**

> _"Do you know—I hardly remembered you?"_   
>  _"Hardly remembered me?"_   
>  _"I mean: how shall I explain? I—it's always so. EACH TIME YOU HAPPEN TO ME ALL OVER AGAIN."_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Edith Wharton


End file.
